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Preface

Fol­low­ing a wish expressed by Pope Fran­cis, the Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­e­my of Sci­ences and the Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­e­my of Social Sci­ences, togeth­er with the FIAMC (the World Fed­er­a­tion of Catholic Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tions), are organ­is­ing a prepara­to­ry work­shop on 2–3 Novem­ber 2013 in the Casi­na Pio IV. This will exam­ine human traf­fick­ing and mod­ern slav­ery in order to estab­lish the real state of this phe­nom­e­non and an agen­da to com­bat this heinous crime. For exam­ple, the nat­ur­al sci­ences today can pro­vide new tools that can be used against this new form of slav­ery, such as a dig­i­tal reg­istry to com­pare the DNA of uniden­ti­fied miss­ing chil­dren (includ­ing cas­es of ille­gal adop­tion) with that of their fam­i­ly mem­bers who have report­ed their disappearance.1

No one can deny that “the trade in human per­sons con­sti­tutes a shock­ing offence against human dig­ni­ty and a grave vio­la­tion of fun­da­men­tal human rights” and is an accel­er­a­tor of crim­i­nal prof­its in this new cen­tu­ry. The Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil itself observed that “slav­ery, pros­ti­tu­tion, the sell­ing of women and chil­dren, and dis­grace­ful work­ing con­di­tions where peo­ple are treat­ed as instru­ments of gain rather than free and respon­si­ble per­sons” are ‘infamies’ which ‘poi­son human soci­ety, debase their per­pe­tra­tors’ and con­sti­tute “a supreme dis­hon­our to the Creator”.2 In one of the few doc­u­ments of the Mag­is­teri­um of the Popes on this issue, quot­ed above, the Blessed John Paul II added that “such sit­u­a­tions are an affront to fun damen­tal val­ues which are shared by all cul­tures and peo­ples, val­ues root­ed in the very nature of the human per­son”. The hor­ri­ble increase in this crime, the Pope con­tin­ued, is a new chal­lenge for the social sci­ences and nat­ur­al sci­ences in the con­text of con­tem­po­rary globalisation:“the alarm­ing increase in the trade in human beings is one of the press­ing polit­i­cal, social and eco­nom­ic prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with the process of glob­al­i­sa­tion; it presents a seri­ous threat to the secu­ri­ty of indi­vid­ual nations and a ques­tion of inter­na­tion­al jus­tice which can­not be deferred’.3

Accord­ing to the recent UNODC 2012 Report on Traf­fick­ing,4 the UN start­ed being aware of this increas­ing crime only in the year 2000, togeth­er with the emerg­ing effects of glob­al­i­sa­tion, and sub­se­quent­ly draft­ed a Pro­to­col to Pre­vent, Sup­press and Pun­ish Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons, Espe­cial­ly Women and Chil­dren, sup­ple­ment­ing the Unit­ed Nations Con­ven­tion against Transna­tion­al Orga­nized Crime, which has been signed by 117 parties.5 Accord­ing to the 2012 Report, the Inter­na­tion­al Labour Organ­i­sa­tion esti­mat­ed that between 2002 and 2010 “20.9 mil­lion peo­ple were vic­tims of forced labour globally.This esti­mate also includes vic­tims of human traf­fick­ing for labour and sex­u­al exploita­tion” (p. 1). Each year, it is esti­mat­ed that about 2 mil­lion peo­ple are vic­tims of sex­u­al traf­fick­ing, 60% of whom are girls. Human organ traf­fick­ing reach­es almost 1% of that fig­ure, thus affect­ing around 20,000 peo­ple who are forced or deceived into giv­ing up an organ (liv­er, kid­ney, pan­creas, cornea, lung, even the heart), not with­out the com­plic­i­ty of doc­tors, nurs­es and oth­er med­ical staff, who have pledged to fol­low Hip­pocrates’ oath Pri­mum non nocere instead. But these chill­ing fig­ures “rep­re­sent only the tip of the ice­berg, as crim­i­nals gen­er­al­ly go to great lengths to pre­vent the detec­tion of their activ­i­ties” (p. 16). Some observers spec­u­late that, with­in ten years, human traf­fick­ing will sur­pass drugs and weapons traf­fick­ing to become the most prof­itable crim­i­nal activ­i­ty in the world. Recent trends, how­ev­er, indi­cate that human traf­fick­ing is already in the first place, so that far from being a declin­ing social crime, it is becom­ing ever more threatening.6 Inter­na­tion­al sex traf­fick­ing is not lim­it­ed to poor and unde­vel­oped areas of the world – it is a prob­lem in vir­tu­al­ly every region of the globe. Coun­tries with large (often legal) sex indus­tries cre­ate the demand for traf­ficked women and girls, while coun­tries where traf­fick­ers can eas­i­ly recruit pro­vide the sup­ply. Generally,economically depressed coun­tries pro­vide the eas­i­est recruit­ment for traf­fick­ers. The regions that pro­duce the most sex traf­fick­ing vic­tims are the for­mer Sovi­et republics, Asia, and Latin America.

Because of the enor­mous sums of mon­ey involved and the human scan- dal and moral degra­da­tion of this traf­fic, which lead to pes­simism and resignation,7 many inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions often turn their backs on this tragedy. This is why it is so impor­tant for the PAS and the PASS, togeth­er with the Fed­er­a­tion of Catholic Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tions, to fol­low the Pope’s wish direct­ly and sine glos­sa.Today, against these new forms of slav­ery we need to adopt the ven­er­a­ble atti­tude of the Cata­lan Jesuit St. Peter Claver who saw African slaves in Latin Amer­i­ca as fel­low Chris­tians and, when he made his solemn pro­fes­sion in 1622, signed in Latin: Petrus Claver, aethiop­um sem­per servus (Peter Claver, always ser­vant of the Africans). In short, this great saint embod­ied the Chris­t­ian rev­o­lu­tion, unknown to the Greeks and the Romans and to all pre­vi­ous civil­i­sa­tions, which began explic­it­ly with the famous let­ter to Phile­mon of St. Paul who urged him to con­sid­er Ones­imus ‘no longer as a slave, but as more than a slave, as a dear broth­er’. In oth­er words, we must declare in our time with the Sec­ond­Vat­i­can Coun­cil: “every­one must con­sid­er his neigh­bour with­out excep­tion as anoth­er self, tak­ing into account first of all his life and the means nec­es­sary to liv­ing it with dig­ni­ty, so as not to imi­tate the rich man who had no con­cern for the poor man Lazarus”. In defin­i­tive terms, we must make our own the very words of the Lord:“whatever you did for one of these least broth­ers of mine, you did for me” (Mt. 25:40).

We must thus be grate­ful to Pope Fran­cis for iden­ti­fy­ing one of the most impor­tant social tragedies of our times and hav­ing enough con­fi­dence in our Catholic insti­tu­tions to instruct us to organ­ise this work­shop. As he said dur­ing the canon­i­sa­tion of the Mex­i­can saint, Guadalupe García Zavala, “this is called ‘touch­ing the flesh of Christ’”. The poor, the aban­doned, the sick and the mar­gin­alised are the flesh of Christ. And Moth­er Lupi­ta touched the flesh of Christ and taught us this behav­iour: not to feel ashamed, not to fear, not to find “touch­ing Christ’s flesh” repug­nant. Moth­er Lupi­ta had real­ized what “‘touch­ing Christ’s flesh’ actu­al­ly means”.8 Pope Fran­cis’ words are a clear reac­tion, fol­low­ing of Jesus Christ’s mes­sage, to this new form of con­tem­po­rary slav­ery which con­sti­tutes an abhor­rent vi- ola­tion of the dig­ni­ty and rights of human beings.

Marce­lo Sánchez Sorondo

Rome, 2 Novem­ber 2013